Columnist Dean Juipe: Tournament shows dynasty days are gone

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 25, 2002 | 9:27 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the last NCAA men's basketball championship game to be played in the afternoon, and a reminder of how dramatically the sport has changed.

When UCLA completed its 1971-72 season with a five-point victory over Florida State in the tournament final, the Bruins were at the peak of what was at least a 10-year dynasty.

With nine national championships between 1964 and '73, the John Wooden-coached Bruins became the prototype for how to build an exemplary, fluid program. But it's widely believed today that the successes they enjoyed in that era could never be repeated in this day and age.

Look at how well stocked the Bruins were in '72: Not only did they have two of the finest players of the decade in Bill Walton and Keith Wilkes, they went 30-0 and established a record with an average victory margin of 30.3 points that would seem impossible to ever be threatened.

They were loaded back then, loaded year in and year out.

But college basketball, while having crowned a national champion since 1901, was arguably just coming out of its infancy when UCLA reigned.

It's telltale that '72 was the last afternoon final, as TV got involved in a greater manner the following year and now the pivotal games of the NCAA Tournament are featured in something approximating prime time. The sport is now a very big business.

From a competitive point of view, the glory days at UCLA -- which actually stretched through a 1975 national championship (for 10 titles in 12 years) -- will forever be seen not only as a reflection of Wooden's wizardry but of a period in time in which predictability was at the core of the game. Back then, players arrived on campus, played their four years, graduated, and moved on to either the real world or the NBA.

No such sense of harmony exists today, and, as a result, there is greater diversity. Only once in the last 29 years -- Duke in '92 -- has there been a repeat national champion and there obviously won't be one this year either.

Like it or not, the top players are no longer apt to stay in school for four years and even an upper-echelon program such as Duke suffers the consequences. While the Blue Devils came into this year's tournament ranked No. 1 and hoping to repeat, they're out and the fact they had no seniors among their top six players was at least a contributing factor.

Think Wooden would ever have had a team that was virtually senior-less? Of course not.

But standout seniors are now a rare commodity in college basketball and, for proof, look no further than last year's NBA draft.

Of the 28 players selected in the opening round, only four were college seniors. In comparison, five of the top eight picks had never played a single game of college basketball and all but one of the five was a high-school senior.

This bypassing of college and its accompanying early attrition rate leads to a parity that many fans relish while others simply abhor.

It's the reverse of the free agency that has redefined professional sports. In the pros, the rich continually buy their way to the top, while the leading college basketball programs are more concerned about their players taking flight.